Using automated vehicle positioning to improve efficiency in vehicle platooning

Vehicle platooning allows a follower vehicle to reduce energy consumption by following closely behind a cooperative lead vehicle. In a previous work, we described a lidar-based vehicle detection and tracking approach that measures the extents of the back surface of the lead vehicle and allows for automated lane level positioning. In this work, we introduce a follower vehicle energy model and compare the performance of a vehicle centering strategy based on rear backplane geometry as opposed to center of mass and bounding box approaches. Energy efficiency improvements are discussed with respect to the computational complexity of each approach.